


says the soul to the skin

by theviolonist



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Character Study, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-31
Updated: 2013-01-31
Packaged: 2017-11-27 17:41:01
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 485
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/664667
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theviolonist/pseuds/theviolonist
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Astoria spent her childhood in a little house in the deep end of the forest, where her mother said no one would bother them.</p>
            </blockquote>





	says the soul to the skin

**Author's Note:**

> For [fluffyfrolicker](http://fluffyfrolicker.livejournal.com)'s [multifandom women ficathon](http://fluffyfrolicker.livejournal.com/35323.html).

Astoria spent her childhood in a little house in the deep end of the forest, where her mother said no one would bother them. Of course, no one ever came to see them, either. 

Astoria would go out at night and wait for her father to come back, standing barefoot in the garden in her nightgown, breathing in the heady scent of damp pine. 

He'd smile at her when he came back. It was always worth the days she spent sneezing after, suffocated in her eiderdown. 

*

"You look sickly," her mother said to her every time she came back for the holidays, fifteen and pale, her mouth cherry-red like a bruise. 

"I met a boy," she would answer. 

"Are you sure you're not ill?" Tanya Greengrass would ask. 

"His name is Hyperion," Astoria would say, rolling the name on her tongue like a sweet. 

*

There is no age to get your heart broken. Astoria, like all her fellow blue-bloods, is cold-skinned, a viperine condition that doesn't allow for explosive displays of passion. If asked about it, she probably would tell you the truth: the first time a tiny crack appeared on the membrane was when she was eight and a robin broke its wing on the garden fence. 

*

She's a small, spindly thing; wraith-like, she weaves her way through the years with nothing more than the occasional pink hue rising to her cheeks. Her black hair attracts many jealousies, and as the world around her falls apart under the threats of black magic, Astoria lets first-years weave it into delicate braids. 

"It's a way of coping," she'll say later, serving tea in breakable china. Draco will nod at her, aquiline, and she'll know he understands. 

*

The war comes and goes. Astoria stands in it like a lighthouse in an ocean, sixteen years of pallid light glowing silently in her downcast eyes. 

She's there with the others as it ends; her heart is hammering in her chest, ka-tching, ka-tching like the bejeweled nightingale from the tale. Astoria wonders if she can turn it off. 

*

Draco Malfoy isn't wounded, but his eyes are full of terror. Astoria is tending to those who hurt, and so she sets down her case full of bandaids and gauze and sits next to him on the ravaged stairs. 

"Do you need something?" she asks. 

He turns to look at her, red-eyed and disheveled, and suddenly it's as if she were an angel instead of the small girls who falls ills every time the wind blows too close. 

He nods his head frantically. "Yes," he says. 

*

In the end it's a small affair. The war's tamed the arrogance of wealth, for a time - since this too, of course, will come to a precocious end. 

They take their vows in a church where the light filters through colored glass.

"I do," Astoria says; the membrane tears neatly open, revealing a clear, pulsing red.


End file.
